Women work less often and earn significantly less than men in Japan. We use panel data to investigate employment and earnings dynamics of single and married women over the life-cycle and build a structural model to study roles of fiscal policies in accounting for their behavior. We show that eliminating spousal deductions, social insurance tax exemptions and survivors’ pension benefits for low-income spouses would significantly raise labor supply of women and their earnings. More women would choose regular jobs rather than contingent jobs, accumulate more human capital and enjoy higher income growth. The government would earn higher net revenues and there is a welfare gain when additional taxes are transferred back.

Utilizing a national online survey we conducted in China, we examine the impact of COVID-19 on individuals’ willingness to take risks, willingness to trust other people, and mental health measured by the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CES-D) scale. Our findings suggest that people who live in the neighborhood with a higher number of confirmed cases became more risk-averse, less likely to trust others, and more depressed. Interestingly, the effects on risk preferences and trust attitudes are statistically significant only for men, and the effects on depression are statistically significant only for women. Furthermore, the impact of COVID-19 on financial decisions, such as buying new commercial insurance and making a risky investment, is also statistically significant only for men, which is consistent with our findings on risk preferences. Attitudes towards cadres and doctors mainly drive the results on trust attitudes. The change in employment status does not drive these effects.

We study the equilibrium effects of introducing competitive bidding in drug procurement. In 2019, China introduced a competitive bidding program in which drug companies bid for a prespecified procurement quantity in nine provinces. Using a difference-in-differences design, we show that the program reduced average drug prices by 47.4%. Generic drug firms won most bids and cut prices by 59.4%. We develop a model of demand and supply to quantify the trade-off between lower prices and potential choice distortions. Competitive bidding increases consumer welfare if policymakers consider brand preferences welfare irrelevant. The program also reduced government expenditures on insurance by 27.5%.

Numerous countries cut payroll taxes in response to COVID-19, including China, which reduced employer contributions by up to 21 percentage points. We use administrative data on more than 800,000 Chinese firms to evaluate payroll tax cuts as a business relief measure. We estimate that the tax cuts cover 31.5% of the decline in business cash flow, but labor informality causes 53% of registered firms—24% of aggregate economic activity—to receive no benefits at all. We quantify the targeting of the policy in terms of how much benefits flow to small firms less able to access external finance and to sectors worse hit by COVID-19. We find that (1) small firms and vulnerable industries are comparatively more labor intensive, which leads to desirable targeting; (2) labor informality worsens, but does not eliminate, targeting by firm size; and (3) labor informality is uncorrelated with the COVID-19 shock, and therefore does not affect targeting by sector.

作为新一轮科技革命和产业变革的重要驱动力量，人工智能对企业提高生产率、优化劳动力结构方面有重要影响。本文收集了 2007-2018 年中国沪深 A 股上市公司年报和专利文本信息，采用机器学习的方法构建了企业层面的人工智能指标，究了人工智能对企业生产率的影响以及劳动力技能的匹配过程。本文发现人工智能显著提升了中国上市公司的生产率。为了发挥人工智能的生产率效应，企业会提高劳动力总数，增加非常规高技能劳动力数量，减少常规低技能劳动力数量。人工智能的生产率效应在国有企业、劳动密集型企业、拥有技术型董事会的企业、高技术行业、高要素市场发育程度的地区以及拥有较大政府支持力度的地区中更显著。最后，本文发现人工智能有助于提高公司价值。本文加深了微观企业层面对人工智能在生产过程中所扮演角色的理解和认知，并在企业和政策层面推动人工智能技术发展给出了建议。

Developing countries are characterized by frictions that impede the mobility of workers across occupations and space. We disentangle the role of insecure property rights from other labor mobility frictions for the reallocation of labor from agriculture to non-agriculture and from rural to urban areas. We combine rich household and individual-level panel data from China and an equilibrium quantitative framework that features the sorting of workers across locations and occupations. We explicitly model the farming household and the endogenous decisions of who operates the family farm and who potentially migrates, capturing an additional channel of selection within the household. We find that land insecurity has substantial negative effects on agricultural productivity and structural change, raising the share of households operating farms by almost 30 percentage points and depressing agricultural productivity by more than 10 percent. Quantitatively, land insecurity is as important as all other labor mobility frictions. We measure a sharp reduction in overall labor mobility barriers over 2004-2018 in the Chinese economy, all of which can be accounted for by improved land security, consistent with reforms covering rural land in China during the period.

China’s land market features a substantial industrial discount: industrial-zoned land is an order of magnitude cheaper than residential land. In contrast to explanations centered on subsidies to industry, we find that a primary determinant of this price gap is local public finance. Under the "land finance" system, land sales are an important source of revenues for Chinese local governments. We show that local governments, who serve as monopolistic land sellers in China, face a trade-off between supplying residential or industrial land that is determined by the different time profiles of revenues from industrial and residential land sales, local governments’ financial constraints, and the extent of local governments’ tax revenue sharing with other levels of government.

作为中国资本市场开放的重大制度创新，陆港通交易制度在微观层面的政策效应一直是学术界关注的重要问题。内地资本市场引入境外投资者过程中，既可能因优化公司治理机制而抑制非金融企业的“脱实向虚”趋势，亦可能因加剧管理层对短期利益的跟风追逐而加剧了企业金融化。本文以陆港通交易制度的实施为准自然实验，构建错层外生情景的双重差分模型，探讨资本市场开放对企业金融化的影响。研究发现：（1）资本市场开放能够通过完善公司内部治理效应和加强外部威慑效应抑制企业金融化；（2）进一步分析发现，对于股权制衡度较低、未交叉上市的公司，资本市场开放对企业金融化的抑制作用更加显著。本文的研究结论深化了资本市场开放对企业金融化抑制效应的认知，为资本市场交易制度对企业金融化行为的影响提供了一定的增量证据。

以往研究较少关注资本市场制度变革所发挥的宏观调控作用。本文以2014年新股定价制度调整为场景，考察发行市盈率管制对企业上市融资、再融资以及后续投资活动的影响。研究发现，发行市盈率管制导致公允估值较高的企业通过操纵股本规模、“压线”发行等方式减少上市时出售的股份，上市融资规模显著降低，但这些企业在上市三年内再融资的概率和规模显著上升。同时，发行市盈率管制显著降低了公允估值较高的企业在研发、并购等资金需求量大、风险较高项目上的投资支出。本文的研究表明，尽管企业会设法绕开政策的限制，但发行市盈率管制对企业整体的股权融资效率、重大投资活动都产生了显著的负面影响，而且，由于股权融资成本的上升，上市企业不得不放弃部分有价值的投资机会。本文的发现对监管机构全面理解新股定价制度的经济后果，从宏观层面平衡新股定价制度的利弊具有重要的参考价值。

探究法律制度变化对企业股价崩盘风险的影响，对中国金融市场发展以及《民法典》的完善具有十分重要的意义，由此运用双重差分法系统地考察担保物权制度改革对企业股价崩盘风险的影响。研究发现：担保物权制度改革通过减小企业的融资约束显著降低了股价崩盘风险。进一步通过三重差分法进行异质性检验结果表明，在法律制度环境较好、市场化进程较快、政府关系程度较强的地区，担保物权制度改革降低企业股价崩盘风险的作用相对更大。因此，法律制定者在进一步完善担保物权制度时，应当针对不同企业采取差别化措施，从而促进金融市场良性发展。